Houston Chronicle by Photo of Ryan Nickerson 5/11/2022
Payton Moore dreams of giant fish.
The Sugar Land resident set sail down a Houston bayou Thursday, determined to catch one of the largest alligator gars Texas has potentially ever seen.
Unofficially, he did just that, angling a humongous alligator gar more than 8 feet long and weighing upwards of 300 pounds.
Moore, 32, declined to disclose the name of the bayou for the gargantuan fish's protection, but the full-time YouTuber captured the catch on video and posted it to his channel.
The catch
When Moore first placed his reel, he thought he may have snagged a tree branch. He couldn't move the other end of his line.
The moment the fish started moving, Moore could tell he'd found a giant. "It felt like somebody's car had just started up and was rolling out of the driveway, and I'm hanging on to the end of it,"
Since the fish was too powerful to reel in while at full strength, he first had to exhaust it. He strategically made it swim in circles and constantly changed its direction to confuse it.
"They're big, they're strong, they're heavy, and they give you everything they got, right away," Moore said of alligator gars.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/alligator-gar-bayou-catch-17162146.php WILD LIFE 5/7/2022
In this episode I catch a true river monster: an alligator gar several inches over eight feet long and estimated in the neighborhood of 300lb! Very few fish like this even still exist. Alligator gar are a native species that play a key role in their environment. Efforts to expand protections for these incredible animals is ongoing but in the meantime, should you catch one like this, be sure to release it alive! Check out some of these links below to learn more about the alligator gar and the need to protect them...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOpwlo7Lmjo&t=244s